


Last True Mouthpiece

by GraceEliz



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Jango Fett, F/M, Fluff, Loving relationships, Mando'a, Mentions of Slavery, No Angst, Pre-Prequels, Tenderness, but by god he loves his wife, canon-typical painful backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: Slave markets are dead-souled places. If he had his way, his blade – no, he crushes the thought, the Mand’alor is not him any longer, his blade is lost – then it would burn, a plume of grey-black smoke curling into the pretty blue sky and the cries of the newly Free filling the air alongside the stink of flame. A line of pretty young women is on one wall, a group of assorted men on another
Relationships: Jango Fett & Shmi Skywalker, Jango Fett/Shmi Skywalker
Comments: 20
Kudos: 106
Collections: New SW Canon Server Works





	Last True Mouthpiece

**Author's Note:**

> Jango loves Shmi so much. Title from Take Me To Church which is basically their entire relationship.  
> A Brief Introduction To The Mando'a Used Herein, Because I Am A Proud Nerd:  
> Most of the mando'a Jango thinks is translated by him, in speech or thought process.  
> Beskar’gam, bajur, ade, alor, mando’a, aliit – dar'tome’yaim, echoy’la. The first six words form the resol'nare, or basic mandalorian creed: armour, education, children, the leader, the language, and family. The last words literally mean "apart-from-home" and "lost" which is Jango's entire thought process.  
> Nayc - no.  
> Mando'ad - child of Mandalore. Dar'manda - no longer Mandalorian.  
> Buir(e) - parent(s). Ik'aad - child under three. 'ika - little, diminutive, affectionate.  
> Chaa'viin - one who runs away in fear.  
> yaimpa k’olar, ner’ad - yaimpar is 'to return', k'olar is 'come here' with the k' being imperative and olar being here, and ner'ad is my child.

Slave markets are dead-souled places. If he had his way, his blade – no, he crushes the thought, the Mand’alor is not him any longer, his blade is lost – then it would burn, a plume of grey-black smoke curling into the pretty blue sky and the cries of the newly Free filling the air alongside the stink of flame. A line of pretty young women is on one wall, a group of assorted men on another. Only humans, which is unusual. But it is late, the second sun is setting, chill rising from the shadows. He must have missed most of it.

There is a young woman with long, dark, hair in the middle of the line. Her eyes are dark too. For some reason he is looking at her, examining, searching for something, a low tug in his stomach that he knows to listen to. Who is he to argue with the will of the Manda? Her hands look strong, skin weathered but not sick. Healthy, for someone on this planet. Perhaps she hasn’t lived here her whole life – but then perhaps she has, kept inside away from the damage of the sun how he knows most Twi dancers are kept. Maybe a mechanic, working in the garages. What’s the cost of mercy? Death? His soul holds no value any longer, not after all he’s done. After he failed.

_Beskar’gam, bajur, ade, alor, mando’a, aliit – dar'tome’yaim, echoy’la._

With a muffled curse he shakes the thoughts away.

“Her,” he says, pointing with his short beskar-blade, the one he won’t let out of his hand, just in case. “What’s her name?”

The Rodian shrugs. “Says her code is ASM339, she’s not been in long. Got pregnant.”

Jango sighs inaudibly at that, wonders if there’s anyone he can offer to kill about it. He has already made the decision, he knows, feeling how the Manda in his stomach almost preens before fading. “Pretty.”

“Eh,” the Rodian capitulates with a shrug, “seems not pretty enough. Says she’s a mechanic.” He shuffles his datapads, ticking into boxes and dragging names and all number of little organisational malarkey Jango can’t find in himself to be bothered about. She doesn’t look sickly, or even pregnant, although he can see now that he’s looking for it that her shirt hangs in a certain way. They probably hoped to pass off that firmness as muscle or decent feeding.

He drops his head, clangs his helmet off the barrier. “How much.”

The Rodian smirks. “Sucker for pretty faces,” he quips, but Jango glares through his visor. Evidently his face doesn’t need to be shown for his disapproval to be made evident. “Uh, Gardulla wants twenty.”

“Twelve.”

“Eighteen.”

“Nayc.”

“Sixteen. I can’t go too low, you understand.”

He seethes silently at having to buy a fellow being. “Thirteen.”

“Fourteen,” the Rodian says, final. Jango seethes a little more at having to pay so much. After a moment Jango nods his assent, transfers the credits. She better be a good mechanic: he absolutely cannot afford to pay for one now. Stars, she better appreciate her freedom. “Here’s her key.”

Stars, he despises the weight of the small contraption; he’ll hand it over to her as soon as he’s sure she won’t try to kill him or something. “Where do I collect her from.”

“The big guy,” the Rodian says, already turning to other business. With an angry exhale Jango turns his attention to the ongoing auction, noting that ‘the big guy’ is a scarred Devaronian; he’s pressing buttons on the woman’s collar, changing the light from green to blue. Awaiting collection, he knows, sickened by the remembrance of the colour his skin goes under blue light – or he thinks he remembers. That whole period is a spice haze, rage and grief and heartbreak and loss.

He leaps lightly over the rails, unsurprised by the non-reaction of the crowd. The blue-green Mandalorian in scarred plates is a bounty hunter, not quite famous but well-enough known that most people leave him well alone. Eyes follow him as he stalks to her, and the Devaronian only grunts and hands over her lead. The disgust is so visceral he almost throws up with it, gesturing for the brunette to follow him.

As soon as they’re out of the city he hands her the key. “I’ll have to look at your chip when we reach the ship,” he warns, “don’t run off, I don’t know what’s in it.”

Her eyes, dark in a way different to his own, widen as she accepts the key into her hands, wonder spreading in them when she presses the button and her cuffs fall to the sand. “Thank you.”

Her smile, he thinks, is worth probably a third of what he paid for her. Ew, he tells himself, slightly nauseous he even thought that in actual words. “It’s over this ridge,” he says to fill the silence, and because they are now one Freed slave to another, here on the empty sands which are nothing like a spice mine.

“You can sleep in here. Door doesn’t lock, I’ll find you one,” he says, rubbing the back of his helmet sheepishly. It isn’t much, this tiny storage room with his grim old cot wedged into it, but it’s private. Shmi is quiet behind him, demure but solid. “Let me know what you need. We’ll get it next stop.”

He turns and passes her into the hall, leaping easily up where he can reach into the cavity all the spare blankets are. They’re thin, threadbare, but a couple are heavy enough to pad out the discomfort of the old cot. She can have them all. Space is cold, especially after the stone-oven of Tattooine. They tumble down with soft thuds when he tugs at them, a heap on the deck. He swings down, landing with ease next to them. Almost too late he remembers that his gloves are dirty, removes them and tucks them in one of his pockets before he makes a mess.

“Here,” he says when he drops them inside her room, careful to remain outside the boundary now he’s established it as her space, “you’ll be cold, Shmi.”

Her lips twitch, eyes dark and too old for her pretty young face. How old is she? He should probably ask eventually. “Thank you.”

Jango nods, suddenly wondering whether he should remove his helmet for her comfort – stress is bad for babies, right? “I’ll look for something to eat. The galley is – just call for me when you’re done, I’ll show you around.”

After a brief pause she nods, holding the sheet off the hard cot in her hands. “Yes.”

In his little kitchen he allows his head to fall forwards against the wall. Stars, what is he doing? He bought her, freed her, will have to get the slave-chip out of her soon. How will he feed her? Will she be staying? An in-ship mechanic will be useful, will let him take more jobs, but he’s a bounty hunter and she was until under an hour ago a slave.

_You could take her home._

_I have no home_ , he pushes the intrusion down on reflex, _I am no longer mando’ad, no more Mand’alor. Dar’manda. Lost._

But lost is not a permanent state of being, he knows, has always known, lost is just what you are until the Stars guide you home.

It is hard to admit to it, but he is entranced by the slowly developing swell of her belly where her child is growing. He had asked only once about the father, in case there was someone she would like to be with, knowing that nobody is untraceable, but she had murmured words he understood. There is no father. Well, a Mandalorian is certainly in the right position to understand that concept. Sometimes he wonders absently as he works whether he will be the child’s buir. He doesn’t have that relationship with Shmi, not really, they’ve only known each other three months and adjusting has been, for them both, a challenge.

When she stretches, after they’ve eaten together in an evening before night-cycle, he can’t quite keep his eyes away from the proof of her miracle. Their miracle, even, when he’s feeling soft inside, when he can bear to think he may deserve a little softness in his life. “How are you feeling?”

“Hopeful,” she answers lightly, with a soft smile. “He will be a deliverance, I think. A mother of the desert can feel these things, sometimes.”

“Did you live on Tattooine always?”

She pauses. “No. I was born in wild space, so I am told. Human through and through, but caught as a very little child. I remember nothing.”

Jango considers. What memories does he have, now, of the time before Death Watch came a-murdering through the system that they should have been protecting? Come to that, how many memories has he got left? The mines didn’t take them all. “I don’t remember my mother,” he admits after a moment’s pause. He doesn’t; that is a time lost to him, when his brain was baby-new. Arla is his earliest memory.

“Well. Anakin will remember theirs.”

Anakin, he mouths. “You choose a name already?” Home, children are only named after birth, although it isn’t out of the ordinary to have a shortlist.

Shmi smiles, and he realises he would pay any credits to ensure that smile is never pulled from her lips. It’s like she sees something beautiful where he is blind completely, as though every secret in the universe, every growing seed-child, is revealed in new-soft glory to her soft eyes. If he ever was to have a goddess, a shrine at which to lay his worship, it would be her. Perhaps she was sent by the Ka’ra; or perhaps it is he who was sent, to free her, their paths always destined to cross at that market.

“Jango,” she hisses into the dark. He opens one eye, but she’s already moving, spreading blankets across his bed, welcome weights. “Shove over.”

Her stomach is silhouetted in the starlight shining in through the windows and open doorways. Get ahold of yourself man, he scolds himself, aware of the fact he has no right to notice her in any capacity. “Shmi, what are you doing,” he asks blearily. She makes a high hum of inquiry, hands smoothing the layers, and he repeats his question in Basic.

“It’s cold,” she tells him quietly, and he is silenced. With ease, as though their places are beside each other, she slips into his bed with him, tugging him towards her back so his arm is loosely over her waist. Already between them, in the chasmic nothing between them, the air is heating up.

Stars. He never wants her to leave. They should stay in this little blankets-cocoon for all eternity, with the scattered stars hanging in the emptiness all around them. The words bubble up inside him with a thousand voices. _I know you,_ he wants to tell her, _Shmi I know your voice and your smile and the way you always stack the dishes to your left even though I put them on the right and I know how you fold your dresses and I know how your fingers move over a blaster. All this I know and will hold in my heart through all change; I will learn your changes. I know you in my heart through everything._ “Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum.”

“Mh?”

He is glad that being behind her, and in the dark, hides the way his face heats up. “Go sleep, Shmi.”

“Mmkay.” She very gently pats his hand where it has come to rest over Anakin. “Long as you do too.”

Her body now is worthy of worship, and his own thoughts are making him uncomfortable. Never has he felt this level of sheer adoration for another being, aside for buir.

 _You could go home,_ persists that voice, that voice deep inside which sounds like buir, like strength and faith and hope all in the same beloved echo, _yaimpa k’olar, ner’ad. Bring your cyare home, Jango._

“Are you certain you will be alright whilst I’m gone?”

She huffs in irritation. “I’m pregnant, Jango, not foolish.” Of course not, but still he worries – he worries over her constantly, and even the sight of her thigh holsters and blasters and the blade which he may not have told her is an engagement in his people’s eyes is no comfort. “I’m not chaa’viin.”

“I know,” he says quietly, still worried. Her hair is loose, for once, and he strokes it out of her face with a tenderness his bloodsoaked hands shouldn’t be capable of.

Knowing, her eyes are always so knowing; why does she see all of him so clearly and not turn from it? There is naught left in him but violence and patience, the endless patience. Some days he thinks is to do nothing but wait. Wait for Anakin, wait for her to leave him, wait for his revenge. Shmi takes his hand in her own, holds it gently over her stomach where he feels Anakin moving inside, and just as they both knew he would he falls to his knees and rests his brow against the swell of her. What must he look like? Some errant mando’ad, in his dented beskar stolen back from those who thought themselves worthy of it, knelt at the feet of his beloved.

It is, he knows, fiercely, exactly as it should be.

“And you will be fine?”

“If you ask me again, Fett, I’m going to become really very cross at you,” she promises, waving her short knife at him, and his whole heart swells to life in his chest with a heat that should warm the whole ship up.

“Alright,” he accepts, pulls himself up to his feet and reluctantly away from her. She will be the last thing he sees when he marches on, he knows, she shall be his anchor. That was part of the ancient myth, wasn’t it? Each past Mand’alor would find their anchor, and with this anchor, this root, they would watch over the future. _Mar’eyi gar narser, Jango, mar’ey’bic bal kar’tayli’bic. Find your purpose, Jango, find it and know it in your heart._

 _Tion’cuy mhi narser?_ _What is my purpose? Shmi is. Shmi is why I hunt, why I survive, I want Shmi to be happy._ There would be no limit to where he would delve, for her, for this fire reawakening deep in the pit of his belly. Even deeper than his burning love for his Shmi and Anakin lies Mandalore, smouldering like the barely-red coals of a banked fire.

As he races for the cliff edge, hurling himself into the sky as his phoenix sparks into life and carries him in the hunt, he thinks he might be nearly ready to go home.

Soft hair under his fingers, warm heaviness on his body – a peculiar feathering fluttering push against his bared skin. Jango smiles as he wakes, cherishing in Shmi’s presence, tucked into his side on the huge bed as if they’re still in his bunk on the ship. Anakin continues kicking, making their buir roll over with a sigh. “Sleep, ik'aad,” he rumbles, “your buire need their rest too.”

She grunts. “They can bloody well hurry it up in there.”

“Not too fast, ikaad,” whispers Jango conspiratorially, “mhi ne’yaimpa’su. We are not returned home yet.” The bump of their child rolls again, as though in response to his voice. “Kuur, ik'aad’ika. Hush, little baby.”

His cyare watches him, head propped up on her hand. “You’re planning to raise them with both Basic and mando’a?”

“This child has me for buir,” he says, meeting her dark eyes with his own. “I would be a failed parent if I didn’t at least try.” Her hand fits in his as though they were designed by the Ka’ra to hold on to each other, rough and calloused as they are. “It’s my code, Shmi.”

“I know,” she answers very quietly. Then she shifts and groans and the moment is over. “I hope we’re nearly there.”

He has been counting down their approach since he made the decision to take her to Manda’yaim for Anakin’s birth. “Close. Let me go out first, okay? They won’t hurt you, but they probably have a few problems with me.” The shame wells up again, sharp and stinging as it has always been, like pressing on an open wound. Over the years he’s resigned himself to its weight, to knowing the rage will live in his stomach until he marches on, to the banked coal of Manda simmering below that, and to the guilt.

“Jango. They can’t possibly have more issues with you than you. Udesii.”

Shmi has a point, he admits. “Your buir has me there, again,” he whispers to Anakin. “You better be on my side when you get here.”


End file.
